1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus that form a pattern by ejecting liquid drops from an ejection head onto predetermined positions on a substrate.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2004-7904, filed Jan. 15, 2004 the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
Manufacturing methods that employ a liquid drop ejection technique have attracted attention as methods for manufacturing devices having fine wiring patterns, such as semiconductor integrated circuits, and as methods for manufacturing liquid crystal displays or organic electroluminescence (EL) elements. In these manufacturing technologies, a material layer is formed (i.e., painted) on a substrate by ejecting a liquid material that contains a material used to form a pattern from an ejection head (i.e., an inkjet type head) onto a pattern forming screen so as to form a device. These manufacturing technologies are thus extremely effective in that they can be applied to small quantity—large variety production. Together with the advances towards increasing preciseness of pixels and the like in liquid crystal displays and organic EL displays, demands for increased precision and increased refinement in patterns that are formed on a substrate have been growing.
Because of this, as shown in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2003-127392, a technology has been proposed that improves the landing accuracy of the liquid material by assembling ejection heads with a high degree of accuracy.
However, in the aforementioned technology, a dedicated apparatus is required in order to assemble the ejection heads with a high degree of accuracy, and consequently the problem arises that equipment costs are high. Moreover, if there is displacement in the relative position of the substrate and the ejection head, or if some errors is caused between each ejection head during assembly when a plurality of ejection heads are formed integrally, or if the drive shaft that moves the ejection head and the substrate relative to each other is deflected, then the problem arises that it is difficult to improve the landing accuracy of the liquid material.